Tag Archives: educational expectations

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Jesse is the founder of https://www.schoolofthought.org an online fully immersive learning environment that will be free for students, teachers and universities all over the world. He believes the key to engaging future generations is to teach them how, and not what, to think.

Jesse Richardson is a creative director with over 15 years industry experience, and around 20 years experience arguing with people on the internet. He’s responsible for three major international viral campaigns, two and a bit kids, and an ungrateful, overweight cat.

About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year!It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do — babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning — that equals 6-1/2 hours).

So each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to babysit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations!!

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6-1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

$1.42 per hour per student — a very inexpensive babysitter and they even EDUCATE your kids.

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

And what about those expensive Teacher’s Pensions?
Turns out, tax payers aren’t even supposed to pay those. The teachers agreed to let the administrators withhold a percentage of their current wages, place those wages into growth & interest paying pension account so the teachers could then withdraw back their own wages (plus growth and interest), in their retirement years.

The fact that somebody in administration siphoned off some of that money (the teachers didn’t– they aren’t allowed to) has caused many of those pension funds to run low and therefore (by law) the administrators are now turning to the taxpayers to replenish the funds they borrowed from the teachers’ pension fund. Now, that’s a problem, but it’s not the teachers that caused the problem.

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.

Like many people my first though was the world has changed and of course we need to raise the bar on educational expectations. But then I began to think about it a little more closely. I work in a community college and 70% of incoming freshman are not college ready and this is not unique to my institutions. We spend a great deal of time often a year or more getting students to the college level. This proposal suddenly looks more like an attempt to fix a broken k-12 system than raising the bar.

The second thing that jumps out at me has more to do with the funding than the merits of the proposal. Under the proposal the president has made 25% of the funding would come from the states. My community college is in Illinois and currently the state has difficulties meeting its financial obligations to higher ed. Many of the community colleges in this state has struggled greatly due to this. I can’t image the state being able to take on this new responsibility.